10 January 2009

11 January 2009 - Anti-Israel protester admits protests have become antisemitic

David Rosenberg, posting at "Socialist Unity," is very enthusiastic about protesting Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.

But he's troubled about a feature of these protests that he's honest enough not to deny:

Some of the negatives that need to be addressed:
* The stewarding was very poor. The failure to move people on past the Israeli embassy as darkness was falling and the riot police were tooling up made a confrontation almost inevitable and will give the media an excuse to skew the reports around the violence rather than the numbers, strength and demands of the demo.

* Although the vast majority of placards were clearly in line with the demands of the demonstration (end the siege, stop the killing) there were more than a sprinkling of placards this week with Nazi analogies etc that were more than borderline antisemitic and will be used by opponents to discredit the protest. Again the organisers/stewards need to think about how to deal with this.

* The SWP colonised a large section of Speakers corner where the march was gathering and were bellowing puerile slogans through their megaphones at the demonstrators as they arrived, appealing to them to “destroy Israel” (and presumably among them the Israeli anti-war movement) and calling on Zionists to “Go back to New York”. Not sure which aspect of socialist theory they think that comes from. But if they think the problem is Israeli/Jewish people rather than the oppressive Zionist state then they really have a lot of learning to do.


Perhaps Mr. Rosenberg ought to re-consider whether the problem is really "the oppressive Zionist state" and not the murderous Hamas terror organization and the disgusting antisemitism it promotes worldwide.

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